Driving to a Faculty development day at school today, remembering the two strong French women from yesterday's hike, who looked older than I am, and who had done the entire 9 mile loop that we had wanted to do, and who were so sweet with one another, talking away as they made their way down the mountain, which is harder in some places than going up. Feeling proud of independent women like this, amazing.
And floating down Route 128, which in Massachusetts is said aloud as "One-twenty-eight", thinking how happy I was to have been hiking with Tim, that there is no one else I would choose other than him, with whom to go on such a journey.
And flying softly towards the city, past trees calling me to notice them, standing in their radiant autumn colours, I am in love with the world. And aware of being fifty-five and wide-awake alive, able to walk up mountains, knowing that I must fill my days with all these wonderful things to do, because there is not much time left.
Even listening to the rather horrifying report on the the opening of the International Conference on Biodiversity in Japan, which plans to conserve biodiversity and to use it in a sustainable way, everything suddenly makes sense about using economics to attend to some of the problems. Money really does make the world go round, whether we like it or not, and if we can get business to realise that working towards protecting species and habitats is also in their favour, that they should pay for it, then this is one kind of solution.
For example, Brazil has the largest bauxite mine in the world. Extracting bauxite involves taking the trees and part of the soil, but this mine is doing it all in a relatively responsible manner. They have a major plan which is implemented at all times for reforestation and are funding various branches of research, including major research on primates.
The delegates at this UN conference in Nagoya are considering adopting a new set of targets for 2020 that aim to address the causes of biodiversity loss - things like the enormous expansion of agriculture, pollution, climate change, the spread of invasive species, the ever-increasing use of natural resources. Conservationists believe that this might be a more effective option than setting targets on nature itself, as was done in 2002, none of which have been met. Which is rather depressing.
On the way home I heard another report on an amazing sculptor/conservationist, Jason deCaires Taylor, who is making underwater sculptures using special extra-hard concrete, by using plaster-casts of hundreds of real people. The sculptures are both extremely beautiful and serve a purpose, as a tourist attraction, luring some of the 750 000 visitors to Cancun away from the fragile coral reefs, and also to grow actual coral reefs, a process which has already begun on some of his earlier works in Grenada in the West Indies. The social conscience in art. And something to warm one's heart and give one hope. And so breathtakingly lovely.
And again. I am in love with books and have been all my life. This weekend was the second annual Boston Book Fair. Last year it was sold out and people were turned away in droves, so they had bigger venues this year, and about 25 000 people came to listen to more than 100 authors giving talks, being interviewed, in panel discussions etc. One of the comments on the online Boston Globe story was this wonderful statement:
"Every now and then my eyes tear up full of pride and I want to wrap Boston in my arms and give it a big hug. Saturday at the Boston Book Festival was one of those days." So books are not dead, and I don't believe they will ever be replaced by things like Kindle and Ipad.
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